


for something like a moment

by blindbatalex



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Boston Bruins, M/M, a suspicious lack of tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 10:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18134612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: “So uh,” Brad says and his smile has shifted now from concerned to slightly embarrassed. “There is something you should now. When you were still in the ICU they said that the only people allowed to see you for more than five minutes were family. So uh, I might have told your family and the nurses that we were engaged.”When Patrice wakes up from an illness to hear Brad told people they were engaged so he would be allowed to stay by his side, he does the only natural thing and asks Brad to tell him everything he told his family about their 'engagement' so that they are on the same page if anyone asks.





	for something like a moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluejay141519](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluejay141519/gifts).



> please see end notes for a spoilery content warning! 
> 
> this fic was in no small part inspired by leonard cohen's [alexandra leaving](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbGsEV5yvns).

“How long have I been out?” Patrice croaks.

He is in a dim hospital room, with the only light filtering in coming from the windows. He can’t see outside from where he is lying but it must be dawn or dusk because the light is pale, barely enough to see inside the room. The last thing he remembers, he was lying on his sofa, shaking. He couldn’t stand up and his vision was swimming even as he dialed Zee. What happens afterwards is a hazy mess; there is an ambulance, indistinct voices, worried, and then nothing.

“Like a week,” Brad answers gently. 

Brad.

Brad is sitting on Patrice’s bed, holding Patrice’s hand in both of his own. His hands are ice cold but that doesn’t matter because he is right here by Patrice’s side.

“How are you feeling?” he asks and Patrice has forgotten this exact smile, how to a stranger it looks no different than his trademark smirk but Patrice has always been able to tell from the curl of his lips the concern and relief battling over one another. 

“Like shit.”

There isn’t an inch on Patrice’s body that doesn’t ache. He is so exhausted that if someone asked him to stand up and walk to the door right now they might as well have asked him to jog across the country in an hour.

Not that any of it matters right now.

He reaches a hand to touch Brad’s face, rests his palm on his cheek. Ice cold. They should get Brad another layer or three or turn up the thermostat. It just won’t do to let him freeze like this.

Brad interrupts his train of thought with a clearing of his throat.

“So uh,” he says and his smile has shifted now from concerned to slightly embarrassed. “There is something you should now. When you were still in the ICU they said that the only people allowed to see you for more than five minutes were family. So uh, I might have told your family and the nurses that we were engaged.”

Patrice laughs, so unexpected and so Brad is this piece of news--or he tries to anyway before his body reminds him quite sternly that laughing is among the tasks it isn’t up for at the moment.

“You what?” he tries again once the coughing has subsided and his lungs feel 20% less like they are being ripped to shreds.

“Look, I know I shouldn’t have but it was the only way they would let me be here and I had to be here, Pat. The medical staff promised not to tell anyone and I will talk to your family and set the record straight. I am sorry.”

“Neither of us are,” Patrice replies solemnly. It’s too good an opportunity to pass.

Brad looks slightly panicked as he asks “neither of us are what?” 

Why would he be so worried about something like this?

Patrice grins.

“Straight.”

Brad rolls his eyes so hard they almost disappear into the back of his head, but he is grinning too. “You should be glad you are so hard to hate,” he says fondly, and it sparks a sliver of warmth in Patrice’s chest. Brad should never be worried or sad.

But another thought occurs to him in the next moment, something nebulous and scary, makes him sober up.

“Hey,” he asks, “do you mind not coming clean, just- just for now. Just in case they send you away.”

Brad’s eyes narrow a little. He is rubbing Patrice’s hand between his palms absentmindedly, as if it’s Patrice’s hand that needs warming and not vice versa. 

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

Patrice can almost make out the echoes of a conversation on risk and hockey and sacrifices taking place somewhere far away. He waves his free hand in front of his eyes to dispel it away. 

He nods.

Brad nods too, like he knows. Were his eyes always this shade of hazel, Patrice wonders, or is it the lighting. They are the prettiest eyes he has ever seen. Did he ever tell Brad that?

Is his chest supposed to ache like this because he is sick?

He breaks himself from his own thoughts. “You should um, probably tell me what you told my family though, just so we are on the same page,” he says. The echoes recede into the hallway. His family must have asked a lot of questions if he’s been out for a week, especially his mom and sister who are forces of nature. “Did they ask what we were planning for the wedding?”

Brad smiles. “They did. Especially your mom and sister.”

“What did you tell them?”

Brad removes one of his hands to scratch at the back of his neck. A nervous habit, though he doesn’t look particularly nervous.

“Well, it would make more sense to just tie the knot in city hall of course, much safer, but you always wanted a church wedding. So we planned it for late summer, in Quebec City. A small church just outside the city, with white painted wooden walls.”

Patrice likes that. It probably has a swing in its front yard hanging from an ancient tree that makes Brad laugh and climb on it like a kid, tuxedos and formalities be damned. He can almost feel the September sun on his face, the light breeze on his skin if he closes his eyes. But he mustn’t, because Brad is here.

“Is it beautiful? The wedding.” 

Brad nods. There is a dreaminess to his voice, like he can feel the sunlight and the breeze on his skin too. 

“Very. It smells like pinewood inside the church. Sunlight refracts through the stained glass and washes everything in color. I look breathtaking in my tux standing across from you.”

“What about me?” Patrice tries to go for playful, doesn’t know if he succeeds. 

There is this thing Brad does, where he will give Patrice the highest compliment, and from anyone else it would sound like flattery or utter bullshit, but when he says it he glows from head to toe, says with so much conviction--so much pride in his voice--that Patrice forgets how to breathe sometimes.

“You have looked breathtaking every single day of your life. The most beautiful man I ever met.”

Like right now. He never figured out how to respond to that, how to convey to Brad he feels the same way but couldn’t possibly put it to words.

“Anyway,” Brad continues, “our vows are so touching Torey swears he saw Sweeney of all people tear up--we take a lot of pride in that afterwards though he steadfastly denies that’s what happened.”

Patrice interrupts him. 

Sweeney at their wedding.

“So the team is there?” 

Something about that chills him deep in his guts, rings alarm bells, even as everything Brad is saying feels warm like a summer afternoon.

“Only the people we like.”

“Do we like Sweeney?”

Brad chuckles. “No, but he invited himself.”

 _We are your family,_ Tuukka had said, his mouth a thin hard line. _You are very wrong if you don’t think we have your back so you might as well stop pushing us away._

Maybe they have a point, him and Brad. Maybe it’s only right their families would be there for their special day. Maybe Zee has even convinced Pasta to wear a respectable suit for once in his life and leave the fedora at home.

Pasta’s the kind of kid who would cry his heart out at their wedding and they would give him a hard time about it afterwards but he would know they don’t mean it. Pasta was the one who cried the most.

“Did they ask who proposed?”

Brad settles further into the bed until Patrice can feel the chill of his skin against his middle through the thin blanket. 

“They did.”

He should really get a cardigan or something. It won’t do if he catches a cold.

“So who was it?”

“You.”

Brad reaches a hand to tuck away the stray strand of hair that has fallen on Patrice’s forehead. 

“It was after a game. We got trashed with like no dignity, just destroyed. So after the game we sulked back to our hotel room and I threw myself on the bed and declared I was miserable and I would never be happy again and there wasn’t a single thing in the world that could change my mind.”

Brad’s fingers brush against Patrice’s skin, almost too lightly to register, sends a shiver across Patrice’s body. Patrice used to love it when Brad did that. He kept his hair just long enough and would deliberately let it fall into his eyes after practice or a game if he wasn’t talking to the media, just so Brad could stand on his toes and brush it away. A stolen moment neither of them talked about, a shard of intimacy he was allowed to keep.

“And you are just standing there right, perfectly still on the foot of the bed with your hands in your pockets, not saying a word. You know how quiet you get sometimes after a loss.”

It’s true. Patrice hardly said ten words in the week after--but it won’t do to think about that right now. Brad is telling him how they got engaged.

“Well, then, after I don’t know how long, you just go, ‘Brad will you marry me?’”

“No,” Patrice gasps. He did not see that coming.

“I fucking know dude. You said that, did not elaborate in the slightest, and I was like half sitting up totally frozen in place, wondering if you were messing with me or if I had a fever or something.”

He inhales sharply. “I guess I just never thought you wanted to get married to me you know.”

There is that hurt in Brad’s eyes, that bone deep weariness, before he blinks it away.

“Of course I do,” Patrice protests. He would move mountains not to see that look in Brad’s eyes again, not because of him. He corrects himself a moment later, murmurs “of course I _would,_ that is, if we were together,” and hopes it’s enough. They must have him on a good cocktail of drugs because it’s hard to keep remembering that they aren’t actually together; this is a story Brad is telling for the sake of Patrice’s family. 

Thank God Brad doesn’t seem overly bothered by it, or even acknowledge it.

“Eventually I figured out you were serious.” 

Patrice wonders if he imagines the hint of sorrow in Brad’s smile. 

“And you don’t need me to tell you there was nothing I wanted more and I was never happier to be proven wrong than I was that night.”

Patrice closes his eyes. God. 

“How did we get together?” he asks to change the subject. 

“Remember the rooftop in Nashville?” Brad asks gently.

Voices are dancing in his ears again, whispering, louder now, and Patrice doesn’t like that. His chest hurts and he doesn’t want to think about the rooftop in Nashville. 

Every year when they played there they stayed in the same hotel. Brad had figured out some years ago by what he claimed was chance, that the door on top of a treacherous flight of stairs that led to the roof was not locked even though it should have been. Since then he went back there every year the night before the game, just to see if it was still open. It always was. Nobody else ever seemed to notice.

And one year he convinced Patrice to come with him.

The city glowed with its myriad lights underneath their feet. It was as if it was just the two of them in the world, their breaths made tiny white puffs in the air even though it wasn’t that cold, it never was over there, and Brad stood so close by him, almost on tiptoe and--

“--put my hand on your cheek. You were looking at me like--I don’t even know how to describe it. And I was terrified. That I was reading the moment wrong, what would happen if--a thousand thoughts running through my head in light speed.”

Patrice swallows. He doesn’t know when his eyes started to burn.

“Ssh, it’s okay,” Brad says, wiping a tear away from Patrice’s cheek.

“But it was more than alright in the end, because in the next moment you put your hand over mine--I remember exactly how the callus on your palm felt against my skin, which is like such a random thing to remember. And then you leaned in and you kissed me.”

Patrice smiles. Yes, that was how it happened. 

It was a shy kiss, hesitant and unsure as if they were two awkward teenagers but when they drew back, Brad’s cheeks were already flushed. Oh, he was red as a lobster and it looked so silly and so gorgeous Patrice had to laugh, delight and relief bubbling out of him. He’d wanted it for so long. He’d been in love with Brad for so long he could no longer remember when he first started and finally, finally the world was as it was supposed to be.

Just the two of them with the city underneath their feet and under the clouds high above, lost in each other, tongue and teeth and all, making out with little grace like they intended to avenge every second they spent apart.

Patrice misses him so much. Misses his easy laugh, and how stubborn he is. The way he feels complete when he is near Brad, as if their souls are tied together with an invisible string, and the way Brad knows when to hold onto a grudge and when to let it go. The way he forgives Patrice every single time even when he doesn’t deserve it.

“I know,” Brad whispers, as if he can read Patrice’s mind. “I know you do, but you need to wake up now Patrice, or your mom and sister will be furious with both of us.” 

“Will you be there?” Patrice whispers back. Some questions, you know the answers of, but you ask them anyway just in case you are wrong because you think--you might break and never be whole again if you aren’t.

Brad nods. There are tears in his eyes too.

_Always._

****

It takes a while for the sounds to crystalize into distinct words, for blurs of light and color to snap into focus as faces. A machine is beeping in the background in regular, rhythmic intervals, and his mom and sister are smiling at him from either side of the bed, one of his hands clasped by each.

“Hi,” his mom says gently as if anything stronger and Patrice might break. Patrice swallows past his sore throat, past the ache in his chest. He gives her hand a squeeze and manages to make out a weak ‘hey.’

“Took you long enough loser,” his sister, Mia, tells him with a grin from the other side of the bed. “Can’t believe you almost got killed by a glorified cold.”

“Mia!” his mom hisses back in shock.

Patrice laughs--that’s Mia for you and he loves her for it--or rather, he tries to before his body reminds him quite sternly that laughing isn’t among the tasks it’s up for at the moment. That causes further chaos where his mom is trying to help him sit up and drink some water and nurses materialize in the room and Mia is protesting her innocence.

It’s only when he’s calmed down from the coughing fit and takes a hard look around the room that he realizes what--or rather who--it is missing.

“Where is Brad?” he asks. 

Some questions, you know the answers of, but you ask them anyway just in case you were wrong. Just in case you get to keep your heart in one piece. 

It’s entirely possible Brad isn’t here because he stepped out to get snacks or to go to the bathroom or they sent him home to take a shower. Because he promised. He promised he would be here and Brad isn’t the kind of man who breaks promises.

But the nurses share a look and the younger one grimaces, the pity in her eyes unmistakable. His mom holds his hand tighter as if that will protect him somehow, says ‘oh Pat,’ with infinite sorrow in her voice and Patrice remembers. 

He remembers how quiet TD Garden was, quieter than Patrice had ever seen it before, as they raised number 63 up into the rafters. He remembers how hard he was shaking, how it felt like he might collapse before Zee wrapped an arm around him and held him tight.

A lifetime ago on a rooftop in Nashville, the city is a mosaic of color and light under their feet.

It’s just the two of them in the cool night beneath the cover of gray clouds and their breaths make little white clouds in the air. Almost as if they are the only two people in the world. Brad takes one last step towards Patrice so they are almost standing toe to toe. He puts his hand on Patrice’s cheek. Brad does this thing--he used to do this thing--where he was one of the most excitable people Patrice knew but when he came close to actual panic he slowed to almost a standstill. 

He says nothing now, doesn’t move a finger and there is this wild look in his eyes, terrified but full of hope. The way you feel before a game you know you are going to lose. But music is blaring from arena speakers and the scoreboard reads nil-nil and as you shuffle to center ice for the puck drop it doesn’t matter what you know. There and then, for something like a moment, between the time the referee drops the puck and your stick hits it, anything is possible. The world is yours to take.

For something like a moment, with Brad’s hand resting so gently on his cheek, Patrice allows himself to imagine it, the life they would have together--the nights in and lazy mornings spent in bed. A small church outside of Quebec City where they would get married. It would smell like pine trees inside and there would be a swing on the lawn, hanging from an ancient tree. He imagines the taste of Brad’s lips, how he would moan and whimper under his touch.

Then he puts his hand on top of Brad’s and gently removes it. He will never forget the look on Brad’s face--the way his entire world crumbled in a single second when he did it, the way it took Patrice’s with it.

He’d convinced himself that night, after he told Brad they should go to bed because they had a game tomorrow and left without waiting for him, that he was doing the right thing. Hockey was no place for a gay man, and teammates were not people you dated. They stood so much to lose if word got out and he would have to be strong for the both of them if Brad wasn’t.

He thought there would be time.

**Author's Note:**

> **content warning: referenced/implied character death.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Alright, alright I solemnly swear not to kill anyone off for at least three months from this day forward. Jay please don't murder me.
> 
> Anyway, I say with no shame after writing all of this, comments are my life blood so if you liked the story please do let me know! Hearing from readers is what keeps me coming back to write for more. I am also on tumblr [@blindbatalex](https://blindbatalex.tumblr.com/) if you want to come say hi.
> 
> EDIT: See below for a lovely if vastly different interpretation of certain events in the fic than my own, as written by Aaron_The_8th_Demon.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Posthumous Forgiveness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18139295) by [Aaron_The_8th_Demon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon)
  * [Take It Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18619999) by [Aaron_The_8th_Demon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon)




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